The Social Concerns Ministry Team invites you to join them and to continue to…
READ THROUGH THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR
DAYS 271-300
Our resource is Eugene Peterson’s
THE MESSAGE//REMIX:PAUSE
DAY 271
Psalms 111-114: These psalms call you to praise God. Choose one and read it aloud to God. Make its praises your own. Then let God take the conversation from there. As you do, keep this in mind: God hates hypocrisy and empty religion.
Matthew 6:1-6:18: How do Jesus’ instructions on prayer compare to what you’ve learned through reading Psalms? What quality does God seek in you? Why do people try to make basic acts like generosity and prayer into some sort of religious show?
DAY 272
Psalms 115-118: In the spirit of Psalm 115, spend time praying for God’s name to be made famous across the earth. Couch every request you make in terms that will glorify God’s name rather than get you what you want.
Matthew 6:19-6:34: Do you fuss or worry? Do you primp or complain? Using your answers, rate the strength of your commitment to live a life of God-worship. How can you be set free from the trappings of wanting more?
DAY 273
Over the past six days the psalms and Jesus focused on the greatness of God. The psalms you read praised God because God forgives your sins, heals your diseases, redeems you from hell, crowns you with love and mercy, wraps you in goodness, and renews your youth. You read songs that celebrated God’s mighty acts as well as songs that expressed awe of God’s power as revealed in God’s creation. Then you watched God in action as Jesus overcame temptation, performed miracles, and spoke words of life.
Did this incredible display leave you on your knees, worshipping God? Why or why not? Did it change you in other ways? The more you focus on God’s greatness, the clearer view you get of yourself. So to the degree your opinion of God inflates, your view of yourself deflates. The Bible calls this humility, and you cannot please God without it. Humility doesn’t mean thinking you are a worthless bum no one could possibly love. That’s not how God sees you, and God doesn’t want you to see yourself that way either. Instead, Biblical humility properly puts you in the shadow of God’s glory, as a creature before the Creator. Your universe stops revolving around you and starts to revolve around God.
Select and read again one or two psalms that speak of God’s wonder and awe. Let them transport you into God’s presence. Gaze up at God through them. Let the words imprint on your heart. As they do, pray a prayer you read in the first week of your journey through the Bible. John the Baptizer first voiced the words. Let them become yours as well: “Oh, God, move to the center. Let me slip to the sidelines.”
DAY 274
Psalm 119:1-119:56: Psalm 119 shows you how to pray for clear communication with God. Get specific. Talk to God about what distracts you from hearing God’s voice. Underline and meditate on the phrases that speak of the value and power of God’s Word.
Matthew 7:1-7:14: Why would Jesus intertwine instructions on how to treat people with directions on how to approach God? What do religious slogans, striking deals in prayer, and looking for shortcuts to God have to do with the real God-life?
DAY 275
Psalm 119:57-119:112: Why is staying on the God path so difficult? After all, God blazes it clearly through God’s Word, and it never fades away. Why do people have a hard time holding onto God’s Word? What makes God’s promises fade from your memory?
Matthew 7:15-7:29: How could anyone come so close to the truth and yet miss it? What is the difference between a real disciple and someone who hopes he has the right password? How do you know whether you are in or out with God?
DAY 276
Psalm 119:113-119:176: How does God’s Word rejuvenate your soul? Guide you when you are lost? Comfort you when you’re hurting? What happens when you cry out for God’s help but ignore the timeless permanence of God’s Word?
Matthew 8:1-8:17: If you were there when Jesus performed three miracles in a row, would you praise God, leave everything behind, and follow Jesus? Would you stick around just to see what Jesus would do next? Would you try to get a miracle of your own?
DAY 277
Psalms 120-126: These are Pilgrim songs, songs the Israelites sang as they traveled to Jerusalem to worship. Read one or two out loud, preparing your heart, then go to God as though you are making a pilgrimage to the Temple to offer sacrifices to God.
Matthew 8:18-8:34: If you were a disciple, how would you have reacted to the storm? Why? How will you respond now when trouble suddenly strikes? Do you feel that having Jesus physically present is different than having the Holy Spirit inside of you? Why?
DAY 278
Psalms 127-134: You can almost hear the brakes squeal in Psalm 131. The psalmist is trying to keep from telling the Almighty how God should run the world. What makes waiting on God so difficult? When do you find yourself telling God how to do God’s business?
Matthew 9:1-9:17: If you were the paraplegic, would you connect Jesus’ words with healing? Or would disappointment sweep over you as you thought he might not give you what you really wanted? How does it feel to receive what you need rather than what you want?
DAY 279
Psalms 135-136: The song in Psalm 136 doesn’t need to have an end. Put your own story into it, your story of how God has worked in your life and come through when you needed God most. Sing the song to God, keeping the same refrain. God’s love never quits.
DAY 280
The psalms you read last week focused almost exclusively on worship. The psalmists praised God for God’s Word, and they praised God for the way God worked in the life of their nation. They invited you to join in the song and lose yourself worshipping God. Did you accept the invitation? How did worshipping God through the Psalms change your week? Your experience of church? Where did your acts of praise spill over into the rest of your life? Did you recognize God at work in ways you normally would have overlooked?
Not everyone notices God working, and not everyone responds to God’s power displays by singing God’s praises. Compare the songs of the Psalms with the reactions to Jesus’ miracles by the Pharisees and other religious leaders. What allowed people to get mad over things that should have awed them? Discuss the question with God. Ask God to make you more sensitive to the moving of God’s Spirit so you will recognize God’s wonders and immediately break out in praise.
Toward the end of the coming week you will begin reading Job, one of the most difficult books in the Bible. The difficulty isn’t in the reading itself; the difficulty lies in living the message. In reading Job you will be haunted by this question: would I still trust God if my life fell apart and God did nothing to fix it? Job lived the question. As you read his story, enter into his suffering.
DAY 281
Psalms 137-140: Put yourself into Psalm 139. Add details of your life. Let God show you the way God sees you. Then see God working around you. Listen as God tells you God will never abandon you. Finally, make your own David prayer at the end of the psalm.
Matthew 10: How does so much love result in so much hate? Why does Jesus cause sharp division between people, even members of your own family?
DAY 282
Psalms 141-144: David writes in Psalm 144:3, “I wonder why you care, God—why do you bother with us at all?” Use this question to start your conversation with God. Have you taken God’s grace for granted? What makes you lose the wonder of God’s salvation?
Matthew 11: What is the rest Jesus offers those who are tired, worn out, burned out on religion? What are the unforced rhythms of grace? Have you found following Jesus to be a life lived freely and lightly, or is it a heavy and ill-fitting burden?
DAY 283
Psalms 145-147: These psalms aim a giant spotlight at God’s character. They praise God because God is good and gracious, generous to a fault. Meditate on God’s character today. Read or sing at least one of these psalms to God as an act of worship.
Matthew 12:1-12:21: Why can’t you have a flexible heart and engage in religious rituals? In what ways do the latter choke out the former? What religious rituals do you find yourself becoming entangled with? How can you escape their grip?
DAY 284
Psalms 148-150: Join in the song these psalms start. Find a creative way to praise God. Let God’s praise fill your day and your life. Why would a book of prayers end with songs of praise? What is the relationship between prayer and worship?
Matthew 12:22-12:50: What does it mean for you to slander and reject the Holy Spirit? The Pharisees’ actions show you one answer. Notice how this is no casual sin someone can commit accidentally. Why can’t persistent slander of God’s Spirit be forgiven?
DAY 285
Job 1-2: Did God treat Job fairly? What does fairness have to do with suffering? What is your response to Job’s comment (2:10): “We take the good days from God—why not also the bad days?” Would you still trust God if God treated you like Job?
Matthew 13:1-13:23: How do difficult times reveal whether or not our faith is real? Let Job’s experience open your eyes to how difficult these times may be. What do bad days reveal about your faith? What kind of conversation do they spark between you and God?
DAY 286
Job 3-5: If you were Eliphaz, what would you think of Job after hearing him vent? How would you respond? Should you say anything? Why or why not? What compels people to think they have to say something to those who suffer?
Matthew 13:24-13:58: What is the point of the thistles-in-the-field story? What does it have to do with your world? Is “selling everything” to get God’s kingdom a metaphor, or does Jesus actually describe the cost of getting into God’s kingdom?
DAY 287
Seven weeks ago you started the Psalms, God’s workshop on prayer. Each of the prayers grew from the experiences of real people who often wondered if God had abandoned them. But they also recognized God’s hand at work and praised God for it. In fact, the Psalms revert to praise time and again even while expressing the darkest fears you will find in the Bible. These people learned to depend on God even when they couldn’t see what God might do.
You not only read these prayers, you prayed them back to God. Some of you spoke, others sang. And others might have made a guttural cry. In so doing, you learned that God values honesty over eloquence, simple faith over religious show what else did you learn? And in what ways did God answer (or not yet answer) your prayers? How does your prayer life now compare to the one you had before you started the Psalms?
Which psalms were your favorites? Which were the most painful to read? Which do you want to keep with you by memorizing parts of them? What parallels did you see between the Psalms and the life of Jesus as presented by Matthew? Over the next six days you will continue with Matthew’s account as Jesus moves closer to the Cross. You will also burrow deeper into the questions of suffering through the life of Job. Approach both prayerfully. Watch for connections between them. Also, as you read, compare the advice of Job’s comforters with the railings of the Pharisees against Jesus. How can people so close to the Light fail to see it?
DAY 288
Job 6-8: Job’s ten children are dead. Everything he owned is gone. His body is covered with oozing sores. What made his “friends” ignore his anguish? Why are they wrong in assuming God always blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked?
Matthew 14: What gave Peter courage to get out of the boat? Would you step out of the boat? What changed between the time Peter started strolling on the sea and the moment he started sinking? Talk to God, about how your faith parallels this story.
DAY 289
Job 9-11: What compels people to presume they know how God feels or what God would do in a given situation? When and why do you act like you have God all figured out? Ask God how you have reduced God to a manageable size.
Matthew 15:1-15:20: How consistently do people who shrink God down to a list of rules keep the rules themselves? What makes rules more attractive than God to the human heart?
DAY 290
Job 12-14: Why did Job’s friends feel compelled to defend God’s honor? When have you lived through an experience that made you question God’s goodness? Discuss it with God.
Matthew 15:21-15:39: Why did the disciples wonder how they could feed this crowd of four thousand when they had seen Jesus feed five thousand? How can you make sure you carry over the lessons God teaches you from one test to the next?
DAY 291
Job 15-17: How can wisdom handed down from generation to generation be wrong? What is the difference between genuine compassion and dispensing answers? Why do people assume that those suffering somehow brought their fate upon themselves?
Matthew 16: Why didn’t Jesus just tell his disciples who he was? Why did Jesus start talking about his death right after his disciples figured out he was the promised Messiah? Why did the Messiah have to die? Why does this fact still confound people?
DAY 292
Job 18-19: Because Job’s life turned out so horribly, his friends figured he did something really bad to make God mad. Assuming for a minute that this logic is sound, what kind of friend would say this to one hurting so deeply? What allowed Job to keep trusting God after all he’d been through?
Matthew 17: Jesus said that if you have poppy-seed-sized faith, there is nothing you can’t tackle. How can you relate this truth to the degree of suffering Job endured? Did he have a poppy seed of faith? What about his friends? What about you?
DAY 293
Job 20-22: Both Job and Eliphaz say, “Who are we to tell God how to run God’s affairs?” How different does this line sound from someone who thinks he has God all figured out and someone who doesn’t? Which is the correct posture to take toward God? Why?
Matthew 18:1-18:20: Has a fellow believer hurt you or sinned against you? How did you respond? Go back through the steps Jesus lays out to find what to do next. Why does this matter? What happens when you don’t restore relationships?
DAY 294
As you read Job, who sounds right and who sounds wrong? Why? Why can’t you tell where someone stands with God by the way their life is going right now on earth? Why doesn’t God pour out a steady stream of blessings on good people and a steady stream of suffering on evil people? Look around your own world. Do bad people always get what’s coming to them? Put another way, do cheaters ever prosper? Do nice guys ever finish last? Why?
What kind of conversations did Job’s exchange with his friends spark between you and God this last week? How has this book changed your understanding of God and the way God works in the world? Do you feel more or less secure when it comes to life in this world? Why? Have you come up with an answer for why Jesus, followers, good people who love God with all their heart, suffer like Job today? What parallels do you see between Job’s suffering and the pain Jesus told his disciples awaited him on the cross?
Job’s conversation with his friends continues this week, with a twist. God shows up on the last day. Listen closely for answers to the stream of questions Job poured out throughout the book. Put yourself in his place. How would you respond if God treated you this way? What would your relationship with God look like after struggling so much?
DAY 295
Job 23-25: How does the idea of Job 23:13 fit into your understanding of God? What emotion does this stir in you? When have you been hungry for an explanation but heard only silence? Why doesn’t God feel compelled to explain his actions?
Matthew 18:21-18:35: Where are you in this story? Are you holding a grudge against someone, refusing to forgive them because of all the pain they’ve caused you? In light of what Jesus just said, what must you do now?
DAY 296
Job 26-28: Why, at the climax of this book on suffering, does Job start talking about wisdom? What is the relationship between wisdom and holding on to God when it appears God has forgotten you? Look back on all the statements Job made about God and how the very thought of God scared Job. What is the fear-of-the-Lord that is Wisdom?
Matthew 19: How do Jesus’ teachings on divorce apply today when nearly half of all marriages split? Does Jesus mean those who remarry after divorce are living in perpetual adultery? In Malachi God says he hates divorce. Why is divorce a big deal to God?
DAY 297
Job 29-31: At the beginning of this story, God said there was no one quite like Job. These three chapters show why God said this. How does your character compare to Job’s? When God examines you in each of these areas, what does God find?
Matthew 20: Do you agree with Jesus that the manager in this story was fair? Why or why not? How are generosity, mercy, and fairness related? What does this story have to do with the request that James and John be given the highest places of honor?
DAY 298
Job 32-34: How are Elihu’s points different from the others’? Part of what he says is true. God does work behind the scenes to get people’s attention, and it is impossible for God to do anything evil. However, does that prove Job is wrong?
Matthew 21:1-21:22: Why did the crowd greet Jesus with such enthusiasm? Why didn’t it last? How could the entire city of Jerusalem greet Jesus as the possible Messiah and then witness his execution one week later?
DAY 299
Job 35-37: Did any of Job’s comforters show compassion? Did any try to alleviate his suffering or, at the very least, share it? What does it mean to enter the suffering and help carry the burdens of those around you?
Matthew 21:23-21:46: Read the story of the greedy farmhands in light of your Old Testament readings. The farmhands are the Israelites, and the servants are the prophets. How does reading the story in this way illuminate its meaning? In light of the fates of the prophets, how could the Messiah not be rejected and killed?
DAY 300
Job 38-42: How would you respond if God answered your intense suffering as God did Job? Talk to God now about what God says here. Why does God tell Job’s friends that they spoke nonsense about God while Job spoke the truth?
Matthew 22:1-22:22: Jesus sums up the story of the wedding banquet in 22:14. What does he mean? How do you know if you are invited but won’t make it? What’s the difference between guests at the banquet and those who get kicked out for being improperly dressed?